The former Ministry of Health data and digital director general of health started his role in March 2019 with the mosque shootings in Christchurch happening a week later, and then months later the White Island volcanic tragedy, before Covid-19 hit our shores early the next year.
Like many others, Hunter worked tirelessly to help New Zealanders as the pandemic spread.
It was a baptism of fire “as we didn’t have any real data or intelligence to start with”.
“We were trying to find ways to acquire all the data and get it into a form that could be used by people analysing and writing reports, and preparing stuff for the media, or stand-ups.”
His team hit their stride and were responsible for all the data and reporting, NZ Covid tracer app, national contact tracing system, My Vaccine Pass, My Covid Record, vaccine certificates for international travel, vaccine management system, care in the community system, and more.
“It was quite extraordinary the innovation that was going on.”
Everything was essential but some stuff more so.
“I can still remember a conversation with the PM which was about when were we going to have the vaccine passes. The vaccine passes were about three to four weeks away. She said the vaccine passes were the difference between taking Auckland out of lockdown. I told my colleague we had to have it within a week.”
The pandemic response meant there was no time to rest.
“You had to get on with it. I had a set of principles that I laid out in front of my team. One was good-better-best. Just get something happening and we’ll make it better. We built a contact tracing system within a week and then made it better. And we probably iterated 30 to 40 times on that system which typically we might iterate once or twice a year if we were lucky.
“We were literally rolling out all these different systems and making changes almost every day.
“It was just flat out and at one stage, because we were getting lots of people with lots of ideas, I was getting one email every two seconds. I think my worst day was about 1000 emails.
“One of the emails we did latch on to was from a guy who described a QR code which I thought was something we could probably do. We had to move quickly and in a way where we were protecting ourselves for the future because people were panicking. I told the team we had to own it, create a standard, and put some controls around it.”
Shayne Hunter with his public service medals - one to wear during the day, the other at night. Photo / David Haxton
Responding to the pandemic was exhausting work.
“In the early days I did 89 days without a break and my average day was probably about 16 hours. There were days when you were so dog tired but you still had energy.”
In October last year, Hunter took a much-needed break to go skiing at Mt Ruapehu - which ended in disaster.
He fractured his neck in three places, after wiping out on Whakapapa, and had to wear a neck brace and thoracic chest brace.
“I didn’t go in the office in Wellington for 10 weeks.”
Hunter worked closely with director general Dr Ashley Bloomfield, who was in charge of the ministry’s response to Covid-19.
“He’s an extraordinary guy. His calmness was amazing. I never saw him lose his cool. He was across everything. Such a genuine guy and so much about the people. He really worried about people. He wasn’t a command and control guy but was very decisive about things and what he needed. And he was also very empowering.”
There was a sense of a job-well-done when reflecting on those long and busy days and key decision-making.
“I’m very proud of what we achieved as a team in terms of getting all the technology solutions that we needed in place and at pace. I was blessed with a very good team of people and also a great network of people across the system. We really had nothing to start with and we managed to build really important tools that helped the response.”
Hunter, who stepped down from his role in June, to get more balance back in his life, had another important reflection.
“I wouldn’t want to go through it again but I’m so glad I did.”
